The Awesome Verbal Punching Power of Thomas Paine
Most public-school graduates have heard that Thomas Paine wrote something that convinced the colonies to declare their independence—though if they’re older than twenty-one their memory probably needs jogging. A few can even name what he wrote: Common Sense. And some can even incorrectly attribute a famous line to that pamphlet: “These are the times that try men’s souls.”
With rare exceptions, most people don’t give a whit about Paine or what he wrote. But then, most people don’t care much for American history. What they don’t care about they don’t know about, as Mark Dice has ably demonstrated. Only if something is posted on social media does it count, and probably not for long. Whatever causal effects the days of 1776 might have had, they’re long buried in the great turmoil of events that followed.
But given that the country has been on fire in recent years and given the indoctrination that passes for formal education to explain it, we would be wise to take a closer look at some of the early fathers of our country, especially Thomas Paine, who Pulitzer Prize–winning historian Bernard Bailyn describes as the “bankrupt Quaker corset-maker, the sometime teacher, preacher, and grocer, and twice-dismissed excise officer who happened to catch Benjamin Franklin’s attention in England and who arrived in America only fourteen months before Common Sense was published,” and who had quit school at age twelve to work for his father.
Since the fuse was lit in Lexington in April 1775, colonists had been fighting a foreign ruler that was largely embedded in their surroundings. Their immediate rulers, including the British redcoats colonists had been ordered to board in their homes, were also their neighbors. Under George III their pleas for reconciliation had been ignored, and the prospects for peace and harmony with the “mother country” looked slim.
According to Bailyn, other notable pamphlets of the Revolution,
written by lawyers, ministers, merchants, and planters—[probed] difficult, urgent, and controversial questions and made appropriate recommendations . . . Paine’s [pamphlet] had nothing of the close logic, scholarship, and rational tone of the best of the American pamphleteers . . . he had none of the hard, quizzical, grainy quality of mind that led Madison to probe the deepest questions of republicanism.
To put it bluntly, “Paine was an ignoramus,” Bailyn writes, “both in ideas and in the practice of politics, next to Adams, Jefferson, Madison, or [James] Wilson. He could not discipline his thoughts; they were sucked off continuously from the sketchy outline he apparently had in mind when he began the pamphlet, into the boiling vortex of his emotions.”
And none of the others called for separation from England. And why would they? According to historian-economist Gary North, “The freest society on earth in 1775 was British North America, with the exception of the slave system. Anyone who was not a slave had incomparable freedom.” Why would anyone pay attention to an uneducated immigrant calling for independence?
According to John Adams, at least as many people disliked Common Sense as approved of it. One of the foremost colonial leaders, Adams later described Common Sense as “a poor, ignorant, malicious, short-sighted, crapulous mass.” Did Adams resent the spotlight Paine acquired? According to Harvard historian Jill LaPore, Adams thought Common Sense “offered nothing more than ‘a tolerable Summary of the Arguments which I had been repeating again and again in Congress for nine months.’”
But what to call the age of revolution? Bitterly, Adams lamented, “Call it anything but don’t call it the age of reason. Do you know why? Because it was dominated by Thomas Paine. Call it the age of Paine!”
Later in his retirement, Adams complained to Jefferson, “Joel Barlow was about to record Tom Paine as the great Author of the American Revolution! If he was; I desire that my name may be blotted out forever, from its Records.”
Paine’s Genius
What accounted for Paine’s enormous influence? Bailyn arrives at this insight:
Paine’s intellectual force lay not in his close argumentation on specific points but in his reversal of the presumptions that underlay the arguments, a reversal that forced thoughtful readers to consider not so much a point here and a conclusion there as a wholly new way of looking at the entire range of problems involved. (my emphasis)
Paine “forced people to think the unthinkable, to ponder the supposedly self-evident, and thus to take the first step in bringing about a radical change.” And what was unthinkable? That colonists’ beloved King George III was really “the royal brute of Great Britain,” the latest edition of the “principal ruffian of some restless gang, whose savage manners or pre-eminence in subtlety obtained him the title of chief among plunderers; and who, by increasing in power and extending his depredations, overawed the quiet and defenseless to purchase their safety by frequent contributions.”
Further, “Britain’s supposedly protective nurturance of the colonies had only been a form of selfish economic aggrandizement; she would have nurtured Turkey from exactly the same motivations.”
And about loyalty to the mother country, Paine pointed out, “Not one third of the inhabitants even of this province [Pennsylvania] are of English descent. Wherefore I reprobate the phrase of parent or mother country applied to England only, as being false, selfish, narrow, and ungenerous.”
He saw republican government as the solution to the British system, wherein “people would worship not some ‘hardened, sullen-tempered Pharaoh’ like George III, but law itself and the national constitution, ‘for as in absolute governments the king is law, so in free countries the law ought to be king.’”
Surprisingly, Paine argued that smaller populations had an advantage in war:
Large populations bred prosperity and an excessive involvement in business affairs, both of which had destroyed the military power of nations in the past. The City of London, where England’s commerce was centered, was the most cowardly community in the realm: “the rich are in general slaves to fear, and submit to courtly power with the trembling duplicity of a spaniel.” (my emphasis)
Common Sense exploded with optimism throughout, yet years after the Revolution, in a letter to newly married friend Kitty Nicholson Few in 1789, Paine came home to the reality of government:
A thousand years hence (for I must indulge in a few thoughts), perhaps in less, America may be what England now is! The innocence of her character that won the hearts of all nations in her favor may sound like a romance, and her inimitable virtue as if it had never been. The ruins of that liberty which thousands bled for, or suffered to obtain, may just furnish materials for a village tale or extort a sigh from rustic sensibility, while the fashionable of that day, enveloped in dissipation, shall deride the principle and deny the fact. . . .
But when the empire of America shall fall, the subject for contemplative sorrow will be infinitely greater than crumbling brass or marble can inspire. It will not then be said, here stood a temple of vast antiquity,—here rose a Babel of invisible height, or there a palace of sumptuous extravagance; but here, ah painful thought! the noblest work of human wisdom, the grandest scene of human glory, the fair cause of freedom rose and fell!
By now we should be smart enough to correct the errors of the past. Paine said government is a necessary evil and that man “finds it necessary to surrender up a part of his property to furnish means for the protection of the rest.” Close, but not quite. It’s missing a critical modifier: property should be surrendered voluntarily. Every other dealing on the market is voluntary, so why should government be any different? To make it forced is to embrace a contradiction and grant government a power it would use against us.
Government’s services to the extent we want them should be market services. Otherwise, we end up where we are today.
EXCLUSIVE: New Form Of Blood Clots Found In 50% Of The Dead, Coroner Survey Reveals
Peter Schiff: Household Debt Highest In Nation’s History
In a recent interview, Peter Schiff was featured on Real America with Dan Ball.
In analyzing the current economic landscape, Peter shared a perspective that challenges the optimistic narratives surrounding key indicators. His skepticism extends to reported job growth, which he attributes to individuals taking multiple jobs amid rising prices and stagnant paychecks. Peter also critiqued the inflation report, countering the notion of decreasing inflation by asserting that it is bottoming out and poised to intensify.
He emphasized the stark contrast between official reports and the real experiences of everyday Americans, particularly underscoring the record-high levels of household debt and the government’s role in exacerbating economic challenges.
Furthermore, Peter highlighted the potential repercussions of rising interest rates, predicting that instead of alleviating inflation, they would contribute to its escalation. The interview concluded with a cautionary note on government spending, as Peter advised against additional borrowing when the nation is already grappling with substantial debt.
See below for the interview transcript:
Dan Ball: So, Peter, they put out the CPI numbers, they go, “Oh it’s all great.” I remember the job report last month. They underestimated on purpose and said 122, we got 300 and some thousand. So, they keep saying, “Jobs are up. Inflation’s going down. Everything’s great!” That’s not the true story, is it Peter?
Peter: No, I mean first of all the only reason that jobs are going up is because people are forced to take 2 or 3 jobs, because prices keep going up and their paychecks are not. And of course, we’ve been replacing full-time jobs with part-time jobs, so the numbers would favor extra jobs, but today’s inflation report was a disaster. It really confirms what I’ve been warning for months now. That inflation is bottoming. That we’re not at the peak but we’re at the trough and we never got to 2%. In fact, if you look at the core for the month of January, which the Fed prefers, it was up 4/10ths of one percent on the month. If you annualize that, that’s 5% a year. I mean that’s really where we are, and of course, you’d probably have to double that to get the actual rate, because the government’s rate so understates what’s going on.
Dan: Exactly
Peter: So, the inflation problem is far from solved. In fact, it’s here permanently and it’s going to get a lot worse as the months go by.
Dan: Peter, you’re the numbers guy, so I want you to dispel all these myths that the regime keeps pushing forward about, “These are the best numbers we’ve seen in 50 years.” Okay. But how bad was the economy when Joe took over because of all the COVID lockdowns around the country? Again, you can’t say, “Well the Trump regime handed us a horrible thing…” No no no. States around this country like California, run by Gavin Newsome, Democrats, did tyrannical lockdowns for over two and a half years. They crushed small businesses, medium, and even large businesses. People lost their jobs; they lost their way of everything. And so, of course, if you’re at the bottom, and you start to come up in 3 years of an administration it’s going to look like major amazing growth. But it’s still not even close to back to normal pre-2019 and beyond, behind that before COVID hit. So, explain those numbers and how they’re misconstruing them and tweaking them in their favor, because I’m tired of hearing this crap, “50 years Joe’s got the best economy.” No. He doesn’t.
Peter: Well, you know, figures lie and liars figure. And they’re always going to try to spin these numbers and try to you know put lipstick on a pig. But if you look at Biden’s popularity, which is the lowest of any president in history, and you look at why he’s so unpopular, it’s the economy. When they poll the potential voters as to where Biden scores the lowest, it’s on the economy. And so, if the economy’s as great as they’re saying, why isn’t Biden getting any credit? Why are the people who are living in the economy so pessimistic about the economy that they’re blaming Biden for how bad things are? So, I think that is far more accurate than how the government is spinning it. But even the government data, you know they show us one report with these official jobs numbers, but you have the household survey which comes out the same day and it’s the mirror image of the rosy report they keep touting. All the big companies are announcing layoffs. I don’t know any of them that are hiring. So, we’re not getting good jobs. Meanwhile, if the economy was so great why are people drowning in debt? Why is credit card debt at an all-time record high, despite record-high credit card interest rates?
Dan: Thank you!
Peter: The only reason consumers are using their credit is because they’re broke. You know. And if it was a good economy, they wouldn’t have to depend on credit. They would have the income to buy the things they need. They wouldn’t have to be borrowing money and going this deeply into debt.
Dan: Yeah. Peter, we just put up a graphic that showed an article I think from the website of Zero Hedge which shows how much debt we Americans are in. And you have been hammering this for a year on this program. $1.56 trillion for just credit cards and overall household debt tops $17.5 trillion. That’s the highest number in American history for citizen’s debt. That is astronomical.
Peter: Yeah, and that’s just what they owe on their own. Remember all the citizens are on the hook for their share of the national debt.
Dan: Oh right.
Peter: Because the government is borrowing in our names. And that’s $34.2 trillion. So, if you break it down per household, that’s an even bigger number than the household debt that people have taken on by themselves. And again, if the economy was strong, we wouldn’t be running up a trillion dollars of red ink a quarter on the national debt. Because the strong economy lowers deficits because you get more production, you get higher tax revenues, the government doesn’t have to spend as much on support programs. But what we’re seeing is a fiscal situation that looks like we’re in recession.
Dan: Yeah, and the DOW probably wouldn’t drop almost 700 points. I know it ended only about 450 or 500 down today, but the DOW Jones obviously investors didn’t like this latest CPI and all the job report numbers that just came out in the last week or so, because why would it tank? We have huge gains since January and it took a hit today, right?
Peter: Yeah, investors still don’t understand how bad it is. Investors think that what this report means is that the Fed just has to fight a little harder to win the inflation war. So maybe the rate cuts get delayed a few months. That’s not what it means. It means that the Fed has already lost the inflation fight because the Fed can’t hike rates more, which is what it needs to do. I mean the fact that we have record debt, government and individual debt, proves that the interest rates were too little too late. Because the way rising interest rates are supposed to reduce inflation is by reducing borrowing and spending. But none of that is happening. Everybody is borrowing and spending more despite the rate hikes, and so it’s not enough. And actually, the rate hikes are prices. Interest rates are prices. And they work through the economy just like rents, raw materials, or wages. And so, these rising prices, and higher interest rates, are actually going to cause the CPI to go up.
Dan: Final question and it probably doesn’t help as you just talked about our national debt of $34 trillion on top of the household debt of $17.5 trillion. It doesn’t help when your Senate passes another $95 billion foreign aid bill so then investors and the American people see our government spending more money we don’t have. A few seconds left you get the final say on that one.
Peter: Yeah, well you know, we’re borrowing money from the rest of the world to recycle it back to other parts of the world. Look, we can’t give aid to other nations when we’re already broke. Yes, sure if we had big surpluses and we wanted to share some of the wealth. But we can’t go deeper into debt. At a minimum, if they want to appropriate some funds, they need to cut someplace else. They can’t just act like we can spend whatever we want because all this is going to do is add to the inflationary pressures that are already building in the economy.
Dan: Peter, we always like that you keep it real and bring the facts in numbers, unlike this alleged administration that we have to listen to lie to us every single day. Peter Schiff, chief economist, global strategist, founder of SchiffGold. As always, thank you sir. Appreciate you.
Peter: Thank you
EXCLUSIVE: New Form Of Blood Clots Found In 50% Of The Dead, Coroner Survey Reveals
Massive Money Printing Will Accelerate as Debt Soars
The U.S. federal government published a December deficit of $129 billion, up 52% from the previous year. The private sector recession is clear as expenses continue to rise while tax receipts decline. If we look at the period between October and December 2023, the deficit ballooned to a staggering $510 billion.
You may remember that the Biden administration expected a significant deficit reduction from its tax increases and the expected benefits of its Inflation Reduction Act.
What Americans got was a massive deficit and persistent inflation. According to Moody’s chief economist, Mark Zandi, the entire disinflation process seen in the past years comes from exogenous factors such as “fading fallout from the global pandemic on global supply chains and labor markets, and the Russian War in Ukraine and the impact on oil, food, and other commodity prices.” The complete disinflation trend follows the slump in money supply (M2), but the Consumer Price Index (CPI) should have fallen faster if deficit spending, which means more consumption of newly created currency, would have been under control. December was disappointing and higher than it should have been.
The United States annual CPI (+3.4%) came above estimates, proving that the recent bounce in money supply and rising deficit spending continue to erode the purchasing power of the currency and that the base effect generated too much optimism in the past two prints. Most prices rose in December, and only four items fell. In fact, despite a large decline in energy prices, annual services (+5.3%), shelter (+6.2%), and transportation services (+9.7%) continue to show the extent of the inflation problem.
The massive deficit means more taxes, more inflation, and lower growth in the future.
The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) expects an unsustainable path that still leaves a 5.0% deficit by 2027, growing every year to reach a massive 10.0% of GDP in 2053 due to a much faster growth in spending than in revenues. The enormous increase in debt will also lead to extremely poor growth, with real GDP rising much slower throughout the 2023–2053 period than it has, on average, “over the past 30 years.”
Deficits are not a tool for growth; they are tools for stagnation.
Deficits mean that the currency’s purchasing power will continue to vanish with money printing and that the real disposable income of Americans will be demolished with a combination of higher taxes and a weaker real value of their wages and deposit savings.
We must remember that, in Biden’s administration’s own estimates, the accumulated deficit will reach $14 trillion in the period to 2032.This unsustainable level of fiscal irresponsibility will also lead to more massive money printing. The Federal Reserve will have to lead with larger federal fiscal imbalances than seen in crisis times, even considering estimates that assume no recession or crisis. So, if a crisis hits, the situation will simply explode.
Considering all these elements, it is not difficult to think of a Fed balance sheet that rockets from an already elevated 29% of GDP to fifty percent, and it will still be lower than the ECB’s balance sheet!
Readers may think that monetization of debt will be an uncomfortable but necessary measure to reduce indebtedness. However, we should have learned by now that Federal Reserve monetization only makes governments more fiscally imprudent. Public debt continues to reach new record highs both in periods of monetary expansion and in periods of alleged contraction.
2023 proved that central banks’ policy was only restrictive in name, as net liquidity injections and anti-fragmentation programs continued. Policy was restrictive for the private sector, especially small and medium enterprises, and families, not for governments.
2024 will be even worse because the government will not count on rising receipts and a doped economic recovery. Therefore, deficits are likely to surprise negatively again, which means more taxes and lower potential growth disguised with a new set of liquidity injections.
What does this mean for savers? Your US dollars will be worth less, real wages will continue to show poor growth, and, after tax, disposable income will decline. The only way to protect yourself is to find alternative real reserves of value, from gold to bitcoin, which will offset the monetary destruction that is about to accelerate.
EXCLUSIVE: New Form Of Blood Clots Found In 50% Of The Dead, Coroner Survey Reveals
“We Never Locked You Down!” WHO Takes Gaslighting To Whole New Levels
Harrison Smith hosts The American Journal and plays a clip of the head of the World Health Organization gaslighting humanity about the Covid lockdowns passed down from his group to nations that obey its orders.
Defiant Nikki Haley Declares She Won’t Drop Out of Race Even After Imminent Defeat in Home State
Neocon GOP presidential candidate Nikki Haley says she has no intention of dropping out of the 2024 race even if she suffers a stinging defeat at the hands of Donald Trump in her home state of South Carolina.
Anticipating calls for her withdrawal, the former South Carolina governor declared Tuesday that the upcoming primary results in the state on Saturday night won’t determine whether she stays in the race.
“That’s why I refuse to quit. South Carolina will vote on Saturday — and on Sunday I will still be running for president. I’m not going anywhere,” Haley declared at a speech in Greenville.
BREAKING: Nikki Haley says she will not drop out of the 2024 race pic.twitter.com/aVPPIue5m0
— ALX ?? (@alx) February 20, 2024
Elsewhere in her remarks, Haley claimed she wasn’t afraid of Trump’s “retribution.”
“I feel no need to kiss the ring. I have no fear of Trump’s retribution. I’m not looking for anything from him. My own political future is of zero concern,” Haley said, addressing sentiments that continuing the race would be political suicide.
“I feel no need to kiss the ring. I have no fear of Trump’s retribution. I’m not looking for anything from him. My own political future is of zero concern.”
— The Recount (@therecount) February 20, 2024
— Nikki Haley, during remarks in Greenville, South Carolina, hits “herd mentality” of GOP politicians who endorsed Trump pic.twitter.com/CcIOtTBSPn
A Suffolk University/USA TODAY poll Tuesday found voters in South Carolina support Trump 63%-35% over Haley, roughly a 2-1 margin.
According to Axios, Haley plans to stay in the race until Super Tuesday, even if she loses all 14 of the upcoming state primaries until then.
Haley’s defiant posturing comes in the wake of a humiliating defeat in the Nevada Republican primary where she was outvoted by the “None of these candidates” option on the state’s ballot.
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Pelosi Brings Back Debunked RussiaGate Hoax: ‘What Does Putin Have on Donald Trump?’
Former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) tried to revive the debunked RussiaGate conspiracy theory on Monday, claiming without evidence that Russian President Vladimir Putin is blackmailing former President Donald Trump.
During her appearance on former Biden press secretary Jen Psaki’s MSNBC show Inside with Jen Psaki, Pelosi asked what kind of leverage Putin has on Trump to compel him to call on NATO countries to pay their fair share of funding for the alliance.
“What does [Putin] have on Donald Trump that he’d have to constantly be catering to Putin, telling Putin, go into these countries?” Pelosi wondered.
Nancy Pelosi goes completely unhinged as she and Jen Psaki float a delusional conspiracy theory that Putin is blackmailing President Trump with “something financial” pic.twitter.com/E51UNERu82
— RNC Research (@RNCResearch) February 20, 2024
“NATO countries! NATO was there to stop Russia. To keep Russia out. They have been successful for nearly 75 years.”
“And then we have, what’s his name, I usually have him nameless, saying that he doesn’t support NATO,” Pelosi added.
Trump during a campaign rally earlier this month had called for NATO to pay its fair share of its own defense budget.
“NATO was busted until I came along,” Trump said. “I said, ‘Everybody’s gonna pay.’ They said, ‘Well, if we don’t pay, are you still going to protect us?’ I said, ‘Absolutely not.’ They couldn’t believe the answer.”
After comparing Trump to Voldemort, the dark wizard villain of the Harry Potter franchise, Psaki then asked Pelosi what kind of blackmail Putin has on Trump.
“I don’t know what [Putin] has on [Trump], but I think it’s probably financial,” Pelosi replied. “It is probably financial. It’s either something financial [Putin] has on [Trump] or something on the come, something that he expects to get.”
Pelosi went on to decry Trump possibly becoming reelected in November.
“We must be sure that he does not step one foot into the White House,” she said. “Not as president, not as anything. He has brought disgrace to the White House, to these presidents.”
“Now we have someone who had the honor of serving in the White House, didn’t consider it an honor, didn’t consider his oath of office to protect and to defend the Constitution,” Pelosi said of Trump.
After the interview, Psaki continued to feed into the baseless RussiaGate conspiracy theory on X.
“Never holds back…This is a fairly extraordinary thing for a former speaker to say about a former president and a Russian dictator (for good reason btw!),” Psaki wrote Tuesday.
Never holds back…This is a fairly extraordinary thing for a former speaker to say about a former president and a Russian dictator (for good reason btw!) https://t.co/12vLBsUofd
— Jen Psaki (@jrpsaki) February 20, 2024
The media-driven RussiaGate hoax claiming Trump was a Russian agent or was somehow beholden to Putin has been debunked for years.
As outlined by the Durham Report, RussiaGate turned out to be a conspiracy concocted by Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, former CIA Director John Brennan and FBI leadership, and was unquestioningly perpetuated by the mainstream media.
In fact, a recent report confirmed that not only was RussiaGate contrived by Clinton and Obama, but that Obama and Brennan had directed foreign intelligence agencies to spy on Trump officials long before they pushed the “Russia collusion” allegations in the summer of 2016.
But Pelosi and Psaki won’t let these inconvenient facts that utterly devastate the entire RussiaGate narrative stop them from continuing to spout baseless claims about the Deep State hoax.
Watch the full interview: